The following proteins are encoded by genes of the growth hormone (GH) supergene family (Bazan (1990); Mott and Campbell (1995); Silvennoinen and Ihle (1996); Blumberg et al. (2001)): growth hormone, prolactin, placental lactogen, erythropoietin (EPO), thrombopoietin (TPO), interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-3, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-7, IL-9, IL-10, IL-11, IL-12 (p35 subunit), IL-13, IL-15, IL-19, IL-20, IL-21, MDA-7, IL-TIF, AK-155, oncostatin M, ciliary neurotrophic factor, leukemia inhibitory factor, alpha interferon, beta interferon, gamma interferon, omega interferon, tau interferon, granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF), granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), macrophage colony stimulating factor (M-CSF) and cardiotrophin-1 (CT-1) (“the GH supergene family”). It is anticipated that additional members of this gene family will be identified in the future through gene cloning and sequencing. Members of the GH supergene family have similar secondary and tertiary structures, despite the fact that they generally have limited amino acid or DNA sequence identity. The shared structural features allow new members of the gene family to be readily identified.
There is considerable interest on the part of patients and healthcare providers in the development of long acting, “user-friendly” protein therapeutics. Proteins are expensive to manufacture and, unlike conventional small molecule drugs, are not readily absorbed by the body. Moreover, they are digested if taken orally. Therefore, natural proteins must be administered by injection. After injection, most proteins are cleared rapidly from the body, necessitating frequent, often daily, injections. Patients dislike injections, which leads to reduced compliance and reduced drug efficacy. Some proteins, such as erythropoietin (EPO), are effective when administered less often (three times per week for EPO) because they are glycosylated. However, glycosylated proteins are produced using expensive mammalian cell expression systems.
The length of time an injected protein remains in the body is finite and is determined by, e.g., the protein's size and whether or not the protein contains covalent modifications such as glycosylation. Circulating concentrations of injected proteins change constantly, often by several orders of magnitude, over a 24-hour period. Rapidly changing concentrations of protein agonists can have dramatic downstream consequences, at times under-stimulating and at other times over-stimulating target cells. Similar problems plague protein antagonists. These fluctuations can lead to decreased efficacy and increased frequency of adverse side effects for protein therapeutics. The rapid clearance of recombinant proteins from the body significantly increases the amount of protein required per patient and dramatically increases the cost of treatment. The cost of human protein pharmaceuticals is expected to increase dramatically in the years ahead as new and existing drugs are approved for more disease indications.
Thus, there is a need to develop protein delivery technologies that lower the costs of protein therapeutics to patients and healthcare providers. The present invention provides a solution to this problem by providing methods to prolong the circulating half-lives of protein therapeutics in the body so that the proteins do not have to be injected frequently. This solution also satisfies the needs and desires of patients for protein therapeutics that are “user-friendly”, i.e., protein therapeutics that do not require frequent injections. The present invention solves these and other problems by providing biologically active, cysteine-added variants of members of the growth hormone supergene family. The invention also provides for the chemical modification of these variants with cysteine-reactive polymers or other types of cysteine-reactive moieties to produce derivatives thereof and the molecules so produced. The invention also provides for therapeutic methods using the protein variants described herein.